Results for 'esg'
Leave alpha to the daredevils
Robin writes: The American columnist Marilyn vos Savant once wrote: “Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying.” It’s a truth that every investor should take to heart. Of course, if you’re a professional tightrope walker — funambulist, I’m told, is the technical term — this isn’t addressed to […]
Has the FCA finally found a game-changer?
By ROBIN POWELL People love to knock the Financial Conduct Authority — the UK financial regulator — and it’s easy to see why. Every now and again, the FCA really seems to be getting somewhere. Remember, for instance, the interim report on its study on competition in asset management, published in November 2016? […]
Index funds 43 College endowments 0
By LARRY SWEDROE Educational institutions hold hundreds of billions of dollars in endowment funds. The outstanding performance of the Yale endowment fund, managed by legendary investor David Swensen, led many endowments to try to replicate its performance by increasing their exposures to alternative investments such as private equity, private real estate and hedge […]
We believe because we want to
You don’t need a PhD in psychology to know that people will believe they want to believe. Look at any divisive issue — Trump, Brexit, compulsory vaccination, the existence of God etc. — and people on both sides will reject information that runs counter to their beliefs. Active money management is no different. It […]
Is there a link between intelligence and performance?
Is there a link between intelligence and investment performance? In other words, do clever people earn higher returns? As JOACHIM KLEMENT explains, it appears they don’t. One of the things that always gets me riled up is when investors think that a fund manager who has good performance must be smart. Let […]
Three hundred and twenty billion dollars
$320 billion is a colossal sum of money. And that’s the value of the cumulative savings in fund management fees that US investors have made over the last 24 years by using investment products linked to the different S&P Dow Jones indices. S&P’s ANU GANTI has been running the numbers. The evolution of indexing is […]
Panic and sell, now what?
By LARRY SWEDROE The academic literature on investing is filled with hundreds of anomalies. My own view is that the greatest anomaly of them all is that while investors idolise Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha”, so many not only tend to ignore his advice but often do the exact opposite. Consider the […]
Ken French: Why I use a financial adviser
You would think that a distinguished finance professor who hangs around with Nobel laureates wouldn’t need to use a financial adviser. And no doubt Ken French could manage without one if he wanted to. But, he says, it’s the most important cheque he and his wife write. Speaking on the latest Rational Reminder podcast, […]
